The links between lone wolves and actual terrorist groups tend to be informal and conducted online. Lone wolf terrorists may sympathize with and consider themselves part of larger groups, but they are usually not active participants. Lone actor terrorists are ideologically driven, with political or religious motives, and are intended to create fear and influence public opinion. Motives Īcademic studies tend to distinguish between grievance driven lone actors and lone actor terrorists. Some sources include injured victims in the total while other definitions specify the victims must be dead in order to be counted. Different sources describe the minimum number of victims as between three and five, with most authorities describing four as the minimum.

In the United States in particular, lone actor attacks are associated with mass shootings in which multiple people are shot – although the definition of a mass shooting is also contested.

the murders were not committed as part of some other criminal act such as a robbery or as part of gang conflict in which multiple individuals are shot.

Mass murders such as familicides where one member of a family kills all other members in the family home are not considered as lone actor shootings.

the shootings occurred in a public situation.

This still meets the academic definition of lone actor shooting, because the perpetrators carried out the killings without direction from anyone else In some cases such as the Columbine High School massacre, two students shot and killed 12 students and one teacher.

the perpetrator acts alone without direction from an outside group.

For academics, the definition requires that: It is an ill-defined and academically contested construct, manufactured by the media and by radical political actors. The term lone actor or lone wolf is not a legal term or a social science concept. This particular term is more likely to be used by American law enforcement than by academics who study this phenomenon. The descriptor 'lone wolf' is derived from the notion of a lone wolf, a pack animal that has left or been excluded from its pack. However, only 158 of these met the criteria for a lone actor shooting which occurred in a public setting. Criminologist Grant Duwe identified 845 mass shootings in the United States between 19. The definition also excludes killings such as familicide, where the perpetrator kills the rest of their family in a private setting. The academic definition of lone actor mass shootings means they occur in a public setting and excludes the killing of multiple people if those deaths occur during the commission of other crimes, such as bank robberies or during gang warfare. Studies have found that some lone actor attacks are committed because of personal grievances and a desire for revenge, while others are acts of terrorism, intended to induce fear and influence the way people think. Lone actor attacks have become the subject of academic research. Although definitions vary, most databases require a minimum of four victims (including injured) for the event to be considered a mass murder. In other countries, knives are sometimes used to commit mass stabbings.

In the United States, such attacks are usually committed with firearms. A lone wolf attack, or lone actor attack, is a particular kind of mass murder, committed in a public setting by an individual who plans and commits the act on their own.

Lone wolf hat